This song was written when I was participating in February Album Writing Month this year.It’s a great online songwriting community that attempts to write 14 songs in 28 days. I wrote and demoed it in 48 hours. I wanted to write something light and happy but with an unusual rhythm. The time signature switches between 5/4 and 6/4 throughout the song. The lyrics were intended as throw aways when I first wrote it but they ended up sticking. They just seemed to fit the positive hopeful vibe of the song and I just couldn’t think of anything else! It’s simply a love song aimed at someone who is a bit depressed or stuck in a rut.
The recording process was very slow. I programmed the drums with Ableton Live. It was complicated with all the time changes. Though I was satisfied with the sound of the samples, I ultimately want live drums on the track, I just didn’t have access this time around. I think it could really lift the energy to another level. I played all the live instruments and sang all the vocals. I like to layer lots of simple parts to create a big wall of sound, especially with vocals. The final touch was a high register slide guitar to add atmosphere.
I wanted to keep the video fairly simple. I felt the mood of the song evoked a vast landscape so I used an ultrawide angle lens to make the sky look huge. I also wanted to play with sped up and slow motion footage. I slowed parts of the song down to 30% of the original speed and I doubled the speed of others. Then I practiced along to this backing track so I could lip sync with it. We shot the video (Dunk on camera) down at Orewa Beach at low tide, as the sun was setting.
When it came to editing, I simply sped up the slow parts and slowed down the fast parts to match the original tempo of the song. The video is a compilation of three straight takes that have been tinted a different colour and overlaid. I just varied the opacity of each layer to to get the different colour effects.
Earthbound is available to download for free from Bandcamp. I’ve already started work on the next project, another song/video, which I hope will be out in the next few weeks.